The Boys

Description

In August 1945, the first of 732 child survivors of the Holocaust reached Britain. First settled in the Lake District, they formed a tightly knit group of friends whose terrible shared experience is almost beyond imagining. This is their story, which begins in the lost communities of pre-World War II central Europe, moves through ghetto, concentration camp and death march, to liberation, survival, and finally, fifty years later, a deeply moving reunion. Martin Gilbert has brought together the recollections of this remarkable group of survivors. With magisterial narration, he tells their astonishing stories. The Boys bears witness to the human spirit, enduring the depths, and bearing hopefully the burden and challenge of survival. 'Martin Gilbert is to be congratulated on producing a masterly and deeply moving tribute to those who had the courage and luck to survive' Literary Review

Born in London in 1936, Sir Martin Gilbert was educated at Highgate School and Magdalene College, Oxford. An outstanding historian of the 20th century, he became the official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill in 1968 and has written to great acclaim on the Holocaust and the events of the Second World War.

Impossible to put down ... This is a book about coming out of hell, about great evil, about the triumph of the human spirit, and about the great goodness on the part of those who helped. One is left with hope, and admiration * THE TIMES * A masterpiece of decency, courage and joy ... superb * DAILY TELEGRAPH * Martin Gilbert is to be congratulated on producing a masterly and deeply moving tribute to those who had the courage and luck to survive * LITERARY REVIEW * A story of human resilience, fortitude and victory that restores the readers' hope for mankind * SUNDAY TIMES * This is the story of human beings sucked into a vortex of destruction in which family, identity, religion and culture were all ripped away. A sense of near-miraculous calm descends when the Boys finally arrive in Britain, when human fortitude finally prevails over absolute evil -- David Cesarani * TLS * He doesn't hide the dark side of the stories: he does stress the resilience of their humanity. It's amazing and true * NEW STATESMAN * A series of testimonials to endurance and resourcefulness * DAILY TELEGRAPH * This is an important book ... [an] appalling and wonderful account of efficiently administered savagery, and how a few of its victims with extraordinary courage, resilience and luck, managed to salvage their humanity * SPECTATOR * Assembled by one of the period's premier historians ... A uniquely effective addition to Holocaust literature * KIRKUS * Martin Gilbert has given us yet another indispensable work * TLS * A moving mosaic comprising the voices of the young refugees, setting this against eye-witness accounts of the European experience ... The scope is vast. Research at its best * TIME OUT * It is only when you read individual stories like these that you can come anywhere near grasping the full enormity of the events * FINANCIAL TIMES *